


Wash It All Away

by openhearts



Category: Alice (TV 2009)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2019-07-29 18:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16270244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: Her hips settle against his so she's braced between him and the wall, and they both groan into the sensation of how they fit together like this. Like puzzle pieces, like a key and a lock. He opens her up. She makes him make sense.





	Wash It All Away

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Livejournal 1/31/2010

They stand silently in front of each other, and it's just quiet for a second. They look at each other, both soaking wet and panting from the run through the pounding rain back to the apartment. 

He raises his eyebrows in his typical gesture and shrugs out of his coat and she stops trying to feel okay about it all. Her eyes suddenly sting and tears strangle in her throat. Just . . . he's here and she can't stop feeling terrified he's still somehow never coming back to her. 

She wraps her arms around him and squeezes as hard as she can; she feels his hands running lightly over her back. Drops of water slip from the ends of her hair over his hands. It seemed like the rain had never let up the whole time he was gone, the oppressive gray sky shoving in too close overhead.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry . . . " he mumbles it into her hair, his familiar voice catching and cracking in his throat.

"What for?" Her voice sounds absent; far away like it's coming from somewhere up near the ceiling. 

His hands cage around her face, and his fingertips are cold. He presses forward until her back is against the wall and he is flat and taut from her shoulders to her hips, wet skin, firm muscle, breathing and alive and here. "It took so long," he says, looking confused. "Alice I was gone a month and a half."

"Two days," she reminds him softly. She pulls a breath in as he lets one out and rests his forehead on hers. His hands slide to her hips and he grips them tightly, pulling her closer and tighter against him. 

"You still didn't think I would come back." He states it, softly. Her face twists as the water behind her eyes threatens and she fights to hold it in. He doesn't deserve the doubt. It's not about him, it's her life, and he understands that. 

She rolls her head back and closes her eyes and it takes a moment but his lips lower to her throat. He takes the insult of her fear and somehow steeps it down into the simplest fact: she loves him. Deeply and fiercely, or else she'd never fear that he'd walk away and never come back one day.

He'd had clients who searched high and wide and under for a drop of exhilaration, anticipation, anything close to the terror his Alice can't escape when she feels the threat of loss. It breaks his heart.

He lifts her up and she wraps her legs around his back, and he pushes deep, deep inside too slow and too fast both at once. Her hips settle against his so she's braced between him and the wall, and they both groan into the sensation of how they fit together like this. Like puzzle pieces, like a key and a lock. He opens her up. She makes him make sense.

She arches her back, his hands clenched again around her waist, fingers digging deep as he thrusts up deeper, higher, lower, all at once. He leans in and catches her mouth again and a strand of wet hair is stuck to her cheek and it's annoying and her skin is starting to feel sticky and not just wet from the rain, and they're in the goddamn laundry room, with soggy clothes all over the place at their feet - his feet since hers aren't on the floor - but. None of it matters. 

It flips and warms and sparks in one little corner of her brain that still believes in these things: it's that word, that thought that she still won't let herself admit to. It's that universal truth, that thing that makes her world and his go round in their concentric orbits. 

It's this language she didn't realize she could be so fluent in, but he looks at her and brushes the hair off her cheek and smiles. 

She won't say it, even to herself, but he says it to her anyway.

"I love you, Alice."

She believes him.


End file.
